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Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.
Charles Bukowski
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There must be a way. surely there must be a way that we have not yet thought of. who put this brain inside of me? it cries it demands it says that there is a chance. it will not say "no.
Charles Bukowski
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I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.
Charles Bukowski
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The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich, ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on the sidewalk. The dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed, then turned and walked off. This time he didn't look back. He accelerated down the street. No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn't getting proper nourishment.
Charles Bukowski
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And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life.
Charles Bukowski
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Nobody can save you but yourself and you're worth saving. it's a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.
Charles Bukowski
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As the shadows assume shapes I fight the slow retreat now my once-promise dwindling dwindling now lighting new cigarettes pouring more drinks it has been a beautiful fight still is.
Charles Bukowski
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I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.
Charles Bukowski
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Man was born to die. What did it mean? Hanging around and waiting. Waiting for the 'A train.' Waiting for a pair of big breasts on some August night in a Vegas hotel room. Waiting for the mouse to sing. Waiting for the snake to grow wings. Hanging around.
Charles Bukowski
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There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock
Charles Bukowski
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Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.
Charles Bukowski
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I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.
Charles Bukowski
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I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave ma a relaxex manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.
Charles Bukowski
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Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.
Charles Bukowski
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My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.
Charles Bukowski
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Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?
Charles Bukowski
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It was sad, it was sad, it was sad. When Betty came back we didn't sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat drinking in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and when we went to sleep, I didn't put my feet on her body or she on mine like we used to. We slept without touching. We had both been robbed.
Charles Bukowski
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It is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.
Charles Bukowski
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"You have a very strange face," she said. "You're not really ugly." "Number four shipping clerk, working his way up." "Have you ever been in love?" "Love is for real people." "You sound real." "I dislike real people." "You dislike them?" "I hate them." We drank some more, not saying much. It continued to snow. Gertrude turned her head and stared into the crowd of people. Then she looked at me. "Isn't he handsome?" "Who?" "That soldier over there. He's sitting alone. He sits so straight. And he's got all his medals on." "Come on, let's get out of here."
Charles Bukowski
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It's hard to drink when you dance. And it's hard to dance when you drink.
Charles Bukowski
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It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning.
Charles Bukowski
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There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets... when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.
Charles Bukowski
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There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i. e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.
Charles Bukowski
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And it seems people should not build houses anymore it seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floors under electric lights without shades; it seems there is a lot to forget and a lot not to do and in drugstores, markets, bars, the people are tired, they do not want to move, and I stand there at night and look through this house and the house does not want to be built
Charles Bukowski
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The human race had always disgusted me. essentially, what made them disgusting was the family-relationship illness, which included marriage, exchange of power and aid, which neighborhood, your district, your city, your county, your state, your nation-everybody grabbing each other's assholes in the Honeycomb of survival out of a fear-animalistic stupidity.
Charles Bukowski
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Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
Charles Bukowski
Born:
August 16, 1920
Died:
March 9, 1994
(aged 73)
Bio:
Henry Charles Bukowski was a German-born American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Known for:
The last night of the earth poems (1992)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Love Is a Dog from Hell (1977)
Factotum (1975)
Women (1978)
Most used words:
people
man
love
life
time
god
alone
drink
woman
day
die
feel
felt
live
human
Charles Bukowski on Wikipedia
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